followed by a good dinner, the company took their seats at table after the christening. The humorists of Lower Brittany said, "they did not choose to have their wine baptized." The prior said, "that wine, according to Solomon, cherished the heart of man." The bishop added, "that the Patriarch Judah ought to have tied his ass-colt to the vine, and steeped his cloak in the blood of the grape; and that he was sorry the same could not be done in Lower Brittany, to which God had not allotted vines." Every one endeavored to say a good thing upon the Huron's christening and strokes of gallantry to the godmother. The bailiff, ever interrogating, asked the Huron if he was faithful in keeping his promises.
"How," said he, "can I fail keeping them, since I have deposited them in the hands of Miss St. Yves?"
The Huron grew warm; he had repeatedly drunk his godmother's health.
"If," said he, "I had been baptized with your hand, I feel that the water which was poured on the nape of my neck would have burned me.
The bailiff thought that this was too poetical, being ignorant that allegory is a familiar figure in Canada. But his godmother was very well pleased.
The Huron had, at his baptism, received the name of Hercules. The bishop of St. Malo frequently inquired, who was this tutelar saint, whom he had never heard mentioned before? The Jesuit,